Intel's Digital India design challenge identifies 20 contestants

The Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Intel India shortlisted 20 teams to participate in the Innovate for Digital India Challenge from 1913 entries received from all over India. Each team will be given with Rs. 2 lakhs to develop prototypes in the final stage of this nation-wide contest. The challenge was open to broad range of innovators which include business entrepreneurs, academia, designers, engineers and makers.

The technology area such as biometric sensing capabilities, peripherals using other sensors, intuitive user interface, gesture recognition, multi-lingual & voice support is the focus for these developers and also another area is to create apps that accelerate delivery of e-governance services through eKranti/MyGov apps on mobile platform.

The participants are going to be trained/mentored in Pune for up to 12 weeks starting in August 2015 during which they will develop MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) on Intel Architecture. After eight weeks of initial phase what is called as accelerator phase, 10 teams will be selected and be given Rs. 5 lakhs as Project grant. The remaining ten teams will continue their mentoring phase until completion of 12 weeks.

Mr. HK Mittal, Member Secretary, National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board said “This challenge is proving to be a great platform to combine the best of Intel’s game-changing technology with the government’s Digital India vision and the immense entrepreneurial talent in this country. We look forward to mentoring the Top 20 teams and working with them on their journey of delivering products and solutions that will help realize the Digital India vision.”

The challenge has been designed in collaboration with the Department of Science and Technology (DST), with support from the Department for Electronics and Information Technology, MyGov.in and is being anchored by IIM Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE).